I HAVE been watching through grey window panes
This evening falling ... Someone is astray
Along the ditches filled with autumn rains ...
O wearied wanderer upon thy way
At the dusk hour when shepherds leave the hill,
Hasten! The doors are closed, no fires burn
In lands where thou returnest sick and chill.
Empty the highroad is, and the lucerne
Sounds far away faint with discouragement ...
O hasten: the old lumbering carts have blown
Their lanterns out ... It is the autumn, bent
And gone to sleep over the cold hearth-stone ...
Autumn is singing in the dead vine-shoots ...
It is the hour when corpses on the flood,
Dreamily floating, feel in their white blood
The first cold risen from the river's roots,
And go down to the deep and sheltering mud.

translated by Jethro Bithell